SOMETIMES I had a companion in my fishing, who came through the
village to my house from the other side of the town, and the
catching of the dinner was as much a social exercise as the eating
of it.
Hermit. I wonder what the world is doing now. I have not heard so
much as a locust over the sweet-fern these three hours. The pigeons
are all asleep upon their roosts- no flutter from them. Was that a
farmer's noon horn which sounded from beyond the woods just now? The
hands are coming in to boiled salt beef and cider and Indian bread.
Why will men worry themselves so? He that does not eat need not
work. I wonder how much they have reaped. Who would live there where a
body can never think for the barking of Bose? And oh, the
housekeeping! to keep bright the devil's door-knobs, and scour his
tubs this bright day! Better not keep a house. Say, some hollow
tree; and then for morning calls and dinner-parties! Only a woodpecker
tapping. Oh, they swarm; the sun is too warm there; they are born
too far into life for me. I have water from the spring, and a loaf
of brown bread on the shelf.- Hark! I hear a rustling of the leaves.
Is it some ill-fed village bound yielding to the instinct of the
chase? or the lost pig which is said to be in these woods, whose
tracks I saw after the rain? It comes on apace; my sumachs and
sweetbriers tremble.- Eh, Mr. Poet, is it you? How do you like the
world today?
Poet. See those clouds; how they hang! That's the greatest thing I
have seen today. There's nothing like it in old paintings, nothing
like it in foreign lands- unless when we were off the coast of
Spain. That's a true Mediterranean sky. I thought, as I have my living
to get, and have not eaten today, that I might go a-fishing. That's
the true industry for poets. It is the only trade I have learned.
Come, let's along.
Hermit. I cannot resist. My brown bread will soon be gone. I will go
with you gladly soon, but I am just concluding a serious meditation. I
think that I am near the end of it. Leave me alone, then, for a while.
But that we may not be delayed, you shall be digging the bait
meanwhile. Angleworms are rarely to be met with in these parts,
where the soil was never fattened with manure; the race is nearly
extinct. The sport of digging the bait is nearly equal to that of
catching the fish, when one's appetite is not too keen; and this you
may have all to yourself today. I would advise you to set in the spade
down yonder among the groundnuts, where you see the johnswort
waving. I think that I may warrant you one worm to every three sods
you turn up, if you look well in among the roots of the grass, as if
you were weeding. Or, if you choose to go farther, it will not be
unwise, for I have found the increase of fair bait to be very nearly
as the squares of the distances.
Hermit alone. Let me see; where was I? Methinks I was nearly in this
frame of mind; the world lay about at this angle. Shall I go to heaven
or a-fishing? If I should soon bring this meditation to an end,
would another so sweet occasion be likely to offer? I was as near
being resolved into the essence of things as ever I was in my life.
I fear my thoughts will not come back to me. If it would do any
good, I would whistle for them. When they make us an offer, is it wise
to say, We will think of it? My thoughts have left no track, and I
cannot find the path again. What was it that I was thinking of? It was
a very hazy day. I will just try these three sentences of Confut- see;
they may fetch that state about again. I know not whether it was the
dumps or a budding ecstasy. Mem. There never is but one opportunity of
a kind.
Poet. How now, Hermit, is it too soon? I have got just thirteen
whole ones, beside several which are imperfect or undersized; but they
will do for the smaller fry; they do not cover up the hook so much.
Those village worms are quite too large; a shiner may make a meal
off one without finding the skewer.
Hermit. Well, then, let's be off. Shall we to the Concord? There's
good sport there if the water be not too high.
Why do precisely these objects which we behold make a world? Why has
man just these species of animals for his neighbors; as if nothing but
a mouse could have filled this crevice? I suspect that Pilpay & Co.
have put animals to their best use, for they are all beasts of burden,
in a sense, made to carry some portion of our thoughts.
The mice which haunted my house were not the common ones, which
are said to have been introduced into the country, but a wild native
kind not found in the village. I sent one to a distinguished
naturalist, and it interested him much. When I was building, one of
these had its nest underneath the house, and before I had laid the
second floor, and swept out the shavings, would come out regularly
at lunch time and pick up the crumbs at my feet. It probably had never
seen a man before; and it soon became quite familiar, and would run
over my shoes and up my clothes. It could readily ascend the sides
of the room by short impulses, like a squirrel, which it resembled
in its motions. At length, as I leaned with my elbow on the bench
one day, it ran up my clothes, and along my sleeve, and round and
round the paper which held my dinner, while I kept the latter close,
and dodged and played at bopeep with it; and when at last I held still
a piece of cheese between my thumb and finger, it came and nibbled it,
sitting in my hand, and afterward cleaned its face and paws, like a
fly, and walked away.
A phoebe soon built in my shed, and a robin for protection in a pine
which grew against the house. In June the partridge (Tetrao umbellus),
which is so shy a bird, led her brood past my windows, from the
woods in the rear to the front of my house, clucking and calling to
them like a hen, and in all her behavior proving herself the hen of
the woods. The young suddenly disperse on your approach, at a signal
from the mother, as if a whirlwind had swept them away, and they so
exactly resemble the dried leaves and twigs that many a traveler has
placed his foot in the midst of a brood, and heard the whir of the old
bird as she flew off, and her anxious calls and mewing, or seen her
trail her mings to attract his attention, without suspecting their
neighborhood. The parent will sometimes roll and spin round before you
in such a dishabille, that you cannot, for a few moments, detect
what kind of creature it is. The young squat still and flat, often
running their heads under a leaf, and mind only their mother's
directions given from a distance, nor will your approach make them run
again and betray themselves. You may even tread on them, or have
your eyes on them for a minute, without discovering them. I have
held them in my open hand at such a time, and still their only care,
obedient to their mother and their instinct, was to squat there
without fear or trembling. So perfect is this instinct, that once,
when I had laid them on the leaves again, and one accidentally fell on
its side, it was found with the rest in exactly the same position
ten minutes afterward. They are not callow like the young of most
birds, but more perfectly developed and precocious even than chickens.
The remarkably adult yet innocent expression of their open and
serene eyes is very memorable. All intelligence seems reflected in
them. They suggest not merely the purity of infancy, but a wisdom
clarified by experience. Such an eye was not born when the bird was,
but is coeval with the sky it reflects. The woods do not yield another
such a gem. The traveller does not often look into such a limpid well.
The ignorant or reckless sportsman often shoots the parent at such a
time, and leaves these innocents to fall a prey to some prowling beast
or bird, or gradually mingle with the decaying leaves which they so
much resemble. It is said that when hatched by a hen they will
directly disperse on some alarm, and so are lost, for they never
hear the mother's call which gathers them again. These were my hens
and chickens.
It is remarkable how many creatures live wild and free though secret
in the woods, and still sustain themselves in the neighborhood of
towns, suspected by hunters only. How retired the otter manages to
live here! He grows to be four feet long, as big as a small boy,
perhaps without any human being getting a glimpse of him. I formerly
saw the raccoon in the woods behind where my house is built, and
probably still heard their whinnering at night. Commonly I rested an
hour or two in the shade at noon, after planting, and ate my lunch,
and read a little by a spring which was the source of a swamp and of a
brook, oozing from under Brister's Hill, half a mile from my field.
The approach to this was through a succession of descending grassy
hollows, full of young pitch pines, into a larger wood about the
swamp. There, in a very secluded and shaded spot, under a spreading
white pine, there was yet a clean, firm sward to sit on. I had dug out
the spring and made a well of clear gray water, where I could dip up a
pailful without roiling it, and thither I went for this purpose almost
every day in midsummer, when the pond was warmest. Thither, too, the
woodcock led her brood, to probe the mud for worms, flying but a
foot above them down the bank, while they ran in a troop beneath;
but at last, spying me, she would leave her young and circle round and
round me, nearer and nearer till within four or five feet,
pretending broken wings and legs, to attract my attention, and get off
her young, who would already have taken up their march, with faint,
wiry peep, single file through the swamp, as she directed. Or I
heard the peep of the young when I could not see the parent bird.
There too the turtle doves sat over the spring, or fluttered from
bough to bough of the soft white pines over my head; or the red
squirrel, coursing down the nearest bough, was particularly familiar
and inquisitive. You only need sit still long enough in some
attractive spot in the woods that all its inhabitants may exhibit
themselves to you by turns.
I was witness to events of a less peaceful character. One day when I
went out to my wood-pile, or rather my pile of stumps, I observed
two large ants, the one red, the other much larger, nearly half an
inch long, and black, fiercely contending with one another. Having
once got hold they never let go, but struggled and wrestled and rolled
on the chips incessantly. Looking farther, I was surprised to find
that the chips were covered with such combatants, that it was not a
duellum, but a bellum, a war between two races of ants, the red always
pitted against the black, and frequently two red ones to one black.
The legions of these Myrmidons covered all the hills and vales in my
woodyard, and the ground was already strewn with the dead and dying,
both red and black. It was the only battle which I have ever
witnessed, the only battle-field I ever trod while the battle was
raging; internecine war; the red republicans on the one hand, and
the black imperialists on the other. On every side they were engaged
in deadly combat, yet without any noise that I could hear, and human
soldiers never fought so resolutely. I watched a couple that were fast
locked in each other's embraces, in a little sunny valley amid the
chips, now at noonday prepared to fight till the sun went down, or
life went out. The smaller red champion had fastened himself like a
vice to his adversary's front, and through all the tumblings on that
field never for an instant ceased to gnaw at one of his feelers near
the root, having already caused the other to go by the board; while
the stronger black one dashed him from side to side, and, as I saw
on looking nearer, had already divested him of several of his members.
They fought with more pertinacity than bulldogs. Neither manifested
the least disposition to retreat. It was evident that their battle-cry
was "Conquer or die." In the meanwhile there came along a single red
ant on the hillside of this valley, evidently full of excitement,
who either had despatched his foe, or had not yet taken part in the
battle; probably the latter, for he had lost none of his limbs;
whose mother had charged him to return with his shield or upon it.
Or perchance he was some Achilles, who had nourished his wrath
apart, and had now come to avenge or rescue his Patroclus. He saw this
unequal combat from afar- for the blacks were nearly twice the size of
the red- he drew near with rapid pace till be stood on his guard
within half an inch of the combatants; then, watching his opportunity,
he sprang upon the black warrior, and commenced his operations near
the root of his right fore leg, leaving the foe to select among his
own members; and so there were three united for life, as if a new kind
of attraction had been invented which put all other locks and
cements to shame. I should not have wondered by this time to find that
they had their respective musical bands stationed on some eminent
chip, and playing their national airs the while, to excite the slow
and cheer the dying combatants. I was myself excited somewhat even
as if they had been men. The more you think of it, the less the
difference. And certainly there is not the fight recorded in Concord
history, at least, if in the history of America, that will bear a
moment's comparison with this, whether for the numbers engaged in
it, or for the patriotism and heroism displayed. For numbers and for
carnage it was an Austerlitz or Dresden. Concord Fight! Two killed
on the patriots' side, and Luther Blanchard wounded! Why here every
ant was a Buttrick- "Fire! for God's sake fire!"- and thousands shared
the fate of Davis and Hosmer. There was not one hireling there. I have
no doubt that it was a principle they fought for, as much as our
ancestors, and not to avoid a three-penny tax on their tea; and the
results of this battle will be as important and memorable to those
whom it concerns as those of the battle of Bunker Hill, at least.
I took up the chip oil which the three I have particularly described
were struggling, carried it into my house, and placed it under a
tumbler on my window-sill, in order to see the issue. Holding a
microscope to the first-mentioned red ant, I saw that, though he was
assiduously gnawing at the near fore leg of his enemy, having
severed his remaining feeler, his own breast was all torn away,
exposing what vitals he had there to the jaws of the black warrior,
whose breastplate was apparently too thick for him to pierce; and
the dark carbuncles of the sufferer's eyes shone with ferocity such as
war only could excite. They struggled half an hour longer under the
tumbler, and when I looked again the black soldier had severed the
heads of his foes from their bodies, and the still living heads were
hanging on either side of him like ghastly trophies at his saddle-bow,
still apparently as firmly fastened as ever, and he was endeavoring
with feeble struggles, being without feelers and with only the remnant
of a leg, and I know not how many other wounds, to divest himself of
them; which at length, after half an hour more, he accomplished. I
raised the glass, and he went off over the window-sill in that
crippled state. Whether he finally survived that combat, and spent the
remainder of his days in some Hotel des Invalides, I do not know;
but I thought that his industry would not be worth much thereafter.
I never learned which party was victorious, nor the cause of the
war; but I felt for the rest of that day as if I had had my feelings
excited and harrowed by witnessing the struggle, the ferocity and
carnage, of a human battle before my door.
Kirby and Spence tell us that the battles of ants have long been
celebrated and the date of them recorded, though they say that Huber
is the only modern author who appears to have witnessed them.
"Aeneas Sylvius," say they, "after giving a very circumstantial
account of one contested with great obstinacy by a great and small
species on the trunk of a pear tree," adds that "'this action was
fought in the pontificate of Eugenius the Fourth, in the presence of
Nicholas Pistoriensis, an eminent lawyer, who related the whole,
history of the battle with the greatest fidelity.' A similar
engagement between great and small ants is recorded by Olaus Magnus,
in which the small ones, being victorious, are said to have buried the
bodies of their own soldiers, but left those of their giant enemies
a prey to the birds. This event happened previous to the expulsion
of the tyrant Christiern the Second from Sweden." The battle which I
witnessed took place in the Presidency of Polk, five years before
the passage of Webster's Fugitive-Slave Bill.
Many a village Bose, fit only to course a mud-turtle in a
victualling cellar, sported his heavy quarters in the woods, without
the knowledge of his master, and ineffectually smelled at old fox
burrows and woodchucks' holes; led perchance by some slight cur
which nimbly threaded the wood, and might still inspire a natural
terror in its denizens;- now far behind his guide, barking like a
canine bull toward some small squirrel which had treed itself for
scrutiny, then, cantering off, bending the bushes with his weight,
imagining that he is on the track of some stray member of the jerbilla
family. Once I was surprised to see a cat walking along the stony
shore of the pond, for they rarely wander so far from home. The
surprise was mutual. Nevertheless the most domestic cat, which has
lain on a rug all her days, appears quite at home in the woods, and,
by her sly and stealthy behavior, proves herself more native there
than the regular inhabitants. Once, when berrying, I met with a cat
with young kittens in the woods, quite wild, and they all, like
their mother, had their backs up and were fiercely spitting at me. A
few years before I lived in the woods there was what was called a
"winged cat" in one of the farm-houses in Lincoln nearest the pond,
Mr. Gilian Baker's. When I called to see her in June, 1842, she was
gone a-hunting in the woods, as was her wont (I am not sure whether it
was a male or female, and so use the more common pronoun), but her
mistress told me that she came into the neighborhood a little more
than a year before, in April, and was finally taken into their
house; that she was of a dark brownish-gray color, with a white spot
on her throat, and white feet, and had a large bushy tail like a
fox; that in the winter the fur grew thick and flatted out along her
sides, forming stripes ten or twelve inches long by two and a half
wide, and under her chin like a muff, the upper side loose, the
under matted like felt, and in the spring these appendages dropped
off. They gave me a pair of her "wings," which I keep still. There
is no appearance of a membrane about them. Some thought it was part
flying squirrel or some other wild animal, which is not impossible,
for, according to naturalists, prolific hybrids have been produced
by the union of the marten and domestic cat. This would have been
the right kind of cat for me to keep, if I had kept any; for why
should not a poet's cat be winged as well as his horse?
In the fall the loon (Colymbus glacialis) came, as usual, to moult
and bathe in the pond, making the woods ring with his wild laughter
before I had risen. At rumor of his arrival all the Mill-dam sportsmen
are on the alert, in gigs and on foot, two by two and three by
three, with patent rifles and conical balls and spy-glasses. They come
rustling through the woods like autumn leaves, at least ten men to one
loon. Some station themselves on this side of the pond, some on
that, for the poor bird cannot be omnipresent; if he dive here he must
come up there. But now the kind October wind rises, rustling the
leaves and rippling the surface of the water, so that no loon can be
heard or seen, though his foes sweep the pond with spy-glasses, and
make the woods resound with their discharges. The waves generously
rise and dash angrily, taking sides with all water-fowl, and our
sportsmen must beat a retreat to town and shop and unfinished jobs.
But they were too often successful. When I went to get a pail of water
early in the morning I frequently saw this stately bird sailing out of
my cove within a few rods. If I endeavored to overtake him in a
boat, in order to see how he would manoeuvre, he would dive and be
completely lost, so that I did not discover him again, sometimes, till
the latter part of the day. But I was more than a match for him on the
surface. He commonly went off in a rain.
As I was paddling along the north shore one very calm October
afternoon, for such days especially they settle on to the lakes,
like the milkweed down, having looked in vain over the pond for a
loon, suddenly one, sailing out from the shore toward the middle a few
rods in front of me, set up his mild laugh and betrayed himself. I
pursued with a paddle and he dived, but when he came up I was nearer
than before. He dived again, but I miscalculated the direction he
would take, and we were fifty rods apart when he came to the surface
this time, for I had helped to widen the interval; and again he
laughed long and loud, and with more reason than before. He manoeuvred
so cunningly that I could not get within half a dozen rods of him.
Each time, when he came to the surface, turning his head this way
and that, he cooly surveyed the water and the land, and apparently
chose his course so that he might come up where there was the widest
expanse of water and at the greatest distance from the boat. It was
surprising how quickly he made up his mind and put his resolve into
execution. He led me at once to the widest part of the pond, and could
not be driven from it. While he was thinking one thing in his brain, I
was endeavoring to divine his thought in mine. It was a pretty game,
played on the smooth surface of the pond, a man against a loon.
Suddenly your adversary's checker disappears beneath the board, and
the problem is to place yours nearest to where his will appear
again. Sometimes he would come up unexpectedly on the opposite side of
me, having apparently passed directly under the boat. So long-winded
was he and so unweariable, that when he had swum farthest he would
immediately plunge again, nevertheless; and then no wit could divine
where in the deep pond, beneath the smooth surface, he might be
speeding his way like a fish, for he had time and ability to visit the
bottom of the pond in its deepest part. It is said that loons have
been caught in the New York lakes eighty feet beneath the surface,
with hooks set for trout- though Walden is deeper than that. How
surprised must the fishes be to see this ungainly visitor from another
sphere speeding his way amid their schools! Yet he appeared to know
his course as surely under water as on the surface, and swam much
faster there. Once or twice I saw a ripple where he approached the
surface, just put his head out to reconnoitre, and instantly dived
again. I found that it was as well for me to rest on my oars and
wait his reappearing as to endeavor to calculate where he would
rise; for again and again, when I was straining my eyes over the
surface one way, I would suddenly be startled by his unearthly laugh
behind me. But why, after displaying so much cunning, did he
invariably betray himself the moment he came up by that loud laugh?
Did not his white breast enough betray him? He was indeed a silly
loon, I thought. I could commonly hear the splash of the water when he
came up, and so also detected him. But after an hour he seemed as
fresh as ever, dived as willingly, and swam yet farther than at first.
It was surprising to see how serenely he sailed off with unruffled
breast when he came to the surface, doing all the work with his webbed
feet beneath. His usual note was this demoniac laughter, yet
somewhat like that of a water-fowl; but occasionally, when he had
balked me most successfully and come up a long way off, he uttered a
long-drawn unearthly howl, probably more like that of a wolf than
any bird; as when a beast puts his muzzle to the ground and
deliberately howls. This was his looning- perhaps the wildest sound
that is ever heard here, making the woods ring far and wide. I
concluded that he laughed in derision of my efforts, confident of
his own resources. Though the sky was by this time overcast, the
pond was so smooth that I could see where he broke the surface when
I did not hear him. His white breast, the stillness of the air, and
the smoothness of the water were all against him. At length having
come up fifty rods off, he uttered one of those prolonged howls, as if
calling on the god of loons to aid him, and immediately there came a
wind from the east and rippled the surface, and filled the whole air
with misty rain, and I was impressed as if it were the prayer of the
loon answered, and his god was angry with me; and so I left him
disappearing far away on the tumultuous surface.
For hours, in fall days, I watched the ducks cunningly tack and veer
and hold the middle of the pond, far from the sportsman; tricks
which they will have less need to practise in Louisiana bayous. When
compelled to rise they would sometimes circle round and round and over
the pond at a considerable height, from which they could easily see to
other ponds and the river, like black motes in the sky; and, when I
thought they had gone off thither long since, they would settle down
by a slanting flight of a quarter of a mile on to a distant part which
was left free; but what beside safety they got by sailing in the
middle of Walden I do not know, unless they love its water for the
same reason that I do.
HOUSE-WARMING
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